


Behold, Thy Time was the Time of Love

by riverlight



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-25
Updated: 2006-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:40:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverlight/pseuds/riverlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things that John does to Rodney when they're alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behold, Thy Time was the Time of Love

"What do you do for fun, John?" Kate asks. She's got her legs curled up under her on the couch, and even in the blue-and-grey Atlantis jacket she looks ridiculously young. She's also ridiculously good at what she does, though, John's figured out. Even when she's asking seemingly random questions like this.

"Well, the other night Rodney and I played Monopoly," John says.

 _"Monopoly?"_ she asks, amused. Kate is curious about this thing he has going with Rodney; part of it, John thinks, is her natural professional interest (she's dragged far more out of him than he ever meant to tell about his past relationships) but there's definitely part of her that finds it sort of hilarious. Not that he can blame her. Sometimes he finds it funny himself.

("We can play for real money," John had said. "What, are you kidding?" Rodney'd said. "We're in another galaxy, what do I want with your money? It's practically Monopoly money itself, at this point. I'll take sexual favors instead.")

"God," Kate says. "I bet Rodney's cutthroat at that."

"Yeah," John says. They'd argued for fifteen minutes beforehand about what houses and hotels were worth. He gives her his best grin, slow and lazy. "I won, though."

Kate peals with laughter, and John joins in. Rodney'd been the equivalent of $3,000 in debt when he'd called it quits. John has _plans_ for him, later.

* * *

Sometimes, John likes to shove Rodney against the wall when they're arguing, kiss him just enough to get him to shut up, and then give him a blowjob. Rodney gets so annoyed at having his train of thought interrupted that he calls John every nasty name he can think of and then some that John suspects he's making up on the spot, and later he sulks and won't talk to John for an hour. But he also mumbles incoherent things and pets John's hair during the five minutes of post-orgasm bliss before he goes back to sulking, so all in all John's not too worried.

* * *

"John, God, John," Rodney stutters, jerking to a stop just inside the doorway, eyes wide, face pale.

"Rodney," he manages. He figures he probably should say something more than that, but it feels like it's someone else speaking, not him. _Shock,_ his brain tells him, but that's distant too.

Rodney stands frozen for a second, taking in the cell, the solitary bucket, the bed John's slouched on. "Come on, we've got to get out of here," he says urgently, pushing his way into the room. "Can you walk?" He darts a glance at the hallway outside and comes and crouches between John's legs, running his hands over John's body to check for blood. John's not hurt, at least not in any way Rodney's going to find, but he can't find the words to tell him that.

"God, John, say something," Rodney says, and John can hear the undercurrent of panic in his voice. "If you're hurt, Carson can fix it, whatever it is, but we've got to get out of here." He slings John's arm over his shoulder and hauls John to his feet. Rodney's warm against his side, and he smells like sweat and blood, and also Athosian soap and coffee and _home._ "God," Rodney mutters. "If they hurt you I'm going to blow up the whole fucking planet."

John can feel himself beginning to shake. "Hey, John, hey, it's okay," Rodney's saying when John tunes back in, and somehow John's grabbed Rodney around the waist without noticing and is hanging on so hard his knuckles are aching, but he can't make himself let go.

"Colonel, we really don't have time for this," Rodney says, but he wraps his arms around John anyway, pulling him close, warm and strong along the length of John's body. "It's okay, we've got you," he whispers fiercely into John's hair. "We've got you, we're going home."

 _Home._ "Okay," John whispers. His voice hardly sounds like his own.

"Okay," Rodney repeats, and hugs John tightly again before letting him go. "Okay." He gives John his boot gun to hold and slides one arm around John's waist, and when John leans most of his weight against him he doesn't complain, just murmurs nonsense words of encouragement, and together they go out of the cell to find Ronon and Teyla and the jumper.

* * *

Rodney's got an actual Earth chair in his quarters, the kind with wheels and the weird curvy back. Zelenka says he bribed someone on the Daedalus to bring it over, but John kind of doubts that; he's tried it, and it's just as uncomfortable as he remembers chairs like that being, so why would Rodney have bothered?

John sighs. He'd brought his laptop over to Rodney's quarters, intending to do some mission reports for Elizabeth but actually sort of hoping Rodney would be doing something non-critical so they could do...something more fun. But Rodney'd waved him over to the bed without even turning around, and now he's hunched over his computer, tapping his fingers on his thigh and occasionally muttering half of a sentence under his breath. It's been ten minutes, and John's already bored.

"Is this the power fluctuation stuff from yesterday?" John asks, coming to stand behind Rodney to peer at the screen. Screw it. Whatever Rodney's got going has got to be more interesting than doing a write-up of the natives of PX6–595, who ceremonially painted themselves blue every two weeks but who were otherwise entirely normal, boring Pegasus-style agricultural types.

"No, that was actually important; this is just busywork," Rodney says, making a face at the graph on his screen. "Elizabeth banished me from the labs."

"What, again?" John says.

Rodney sighs and presses a button, and the graphs fold up and turn themselves into the Atlantis version of a screensaver, blue and wavy. "Yeah, can you believe it?" he says, spinning in his chair to face John. He sounds annoyed, but his mouth is relaxed, a lopsided quirk of a smile that's more amused than anything.

"Busywork, huh?" John says. He steps a little closer to Rodney. "So you wouldn't mind a little distraction?"

"Hm," Rodney says thoughtfully, tilting his head back so he can look at John. "I think, really, given the complete and utter pointlessness of what I'm working on, distraction is totally appropriate." He reaches out and tucks his fingers into John's belt-loops, tugging until John's standing between his knees. "If I have to waste my valuable time, at least I can do something fun."

"Well, Rodney, glad I could help out," John drawls, and slides his hands into the soft hair at the back of Rodney's neck, leaning down to kiss him. Against his lips, Rodney smiles.

* * *

Sometimes when they're alone, John brings up the old days, the first years in Atlantis. Not every day, because there's always the risk that Rodney will start remembering one of the later years, and even if half the time he doesn't remember Teyla or Ronon or Elizabeth, he still remembers that they lost them, and his anguish is almost the worse for being directionless and unnameable.

But usually John can steer him into safer waters, and they'll spend an hour talking about that time Lorne got accidentally drunk on a mission and started to sing, or the time when Zelenka kissed Elizabeth in the gateroom, or the time the botanists let a cat loose in the Biology labs. And maybe John changes the ending of some of the stories, maybe he fibs a little when Rodney asks why they left, but he's learned it's easier that way. Rodney can't get sad about it if he doesn't remember.

They should have died defending Atlantis, John knows, or on one of the countless near-death offworld missions, or in an accident in the lab or something. But they'd cheated fate, and instead they'd had years together, first on Atlantis and then back home on Earth, and John hadn't known if he believed in God, but every day he'd been grateful for the time they'd had; every night he'd said a little prayer, thankful for another night with Rodney beside him in their bed.

But then one day John found the car keys in the fridge, and he had a brief moment of amusement, because Rodney always did stuff like this whenever he got really engrossed in some project at the lab, no matter how much John teased him for it. Except then John's mind clicked on, and he had to sit down because his legs were shaking, because Rodney'd just turned over the final prototype to the President, he had no excuses any more, and this had been happening a lot more lately.

And now every day he comes to the hospital to visit the love of his goddamn life, and on the good days he shoos the nurse out of the room and Rodney chatters happily about Atlantis for an hour and then kisses John goodbye, and on the bad days John goes home alone to the house he shared with a man who no longer knows his face or his name.

This is one war that John knows he can't win, but he's going to keep fighting, because as long as Rodney's smiling when John leaves, it's a small victory. Rodney carried him for years, through the Wraith and the Goa'uld and losing Atlantis, and then through the exhaustion and heartbreak that came with his General's stars and a years-long war with desperate odds. John figures he can carry this in return a little while longer; the knowledge of who Rodney once was, of how far he's fallen. Better he carry it than that Rodney should remember and grieve for what he's lost. There'll be time for grief enough, in the end.


End file.
